Angel of the North: Who will help a nurse in war? A heart-wrenching family saga about hope during WWII

By Annie Wilkinson

A gripping and heart-wrenching family saga about ordinary people facing extraordinary challenges, Angel of the North, is perfect for fans of Katie Flynn and Margaret Dickinson.

AS WAR THREATENS HER FAMILY, WHO WILL BE LEFT FOR A YOUNG NURSE TO TURN TO?

April 1941, Hull

As WWII rages on and the Germans continue to bomb the city, Nurse Marie Larsen faces the daily challenge of keeping Hull Royal Infirmary running. But with sudden power cuts, blown out windows and wounded civilians pouring into the hospital after each new attack, she begins to fear that the next bomb might have her name on it . . .

When a fresh wave of bombings tears Hull apart, tragedy strikes close to home for Marie. Her mother now critically ill in hospital and her father missing, she is forced to make tough decisions to keep her younger brother and sister safe. Luckily for Marie, she has the love of her beau Chas to help her through, keeping her spirits up with his letters and phone calls from his post. But when new evidence come to light that suggests Chas isn't all he appears to be, will there be anyone left for Marie turn to in her hour of need?

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK
• Release date: Aug 29, 2013
• ISBN: 9781471115387

Annie Wilkinson

Annie Wilkinson, the youngest of eight children and the mother of two, was raised in Saskatchewan. She works in a variety of mediums including traditional and digital, creating bright and whimsical illustrations for both books and products. She also has a background in design and as a fine artist, two skills that she calls upon quite frequently when illustrating. She lives in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Book preview

Chapter 1

31 March–1 April 1941

At the sound of the bombers Marie Larsen froze. The ominous thrum-thrumming of their engines was rapidly followed by the rattle of anti-aircraft guns. The doctor glanced up from cutting down through layers of fat in search of a suitable vein in his patient’s well-covered ankle.

‘You stay where you are, Nurse,’ he said. ‘We might just have enough time to get this job finished.’

Typical of Dr Steele, Marie thought. She lifted her vivid blue eyes to his face. Just managing to keep the tremor out of her voice, she said: ‘I wasn’t going anywhere, Doctor,’ and turning to her patient gave him what she hoped was a look of reassurance that she was sorely in need of herself.

‘Soon be done,’ she told him. ‘A couple of pints of blood and you’ll feel like a new man.’

The words were barely out of her mouth when the night sky was lit by the eerie white light of chandelier flares. Next, incendiaries would come clattering down and bursting into flames. High explosives and parachute mines would surely follow. With a mounting sense of dread, and praying that none of the bombs would hit the infirmary, Marie concentrated on holding the retractors steady.

She had to live. All her fondest hopes, her most glorious visions of becoming Charles’s wife, of presenting him with his firstborn child, of becoming the mother of a large and happy family, had to be fulfilled. Now every time she heard the hum of a plane she thought of Margaret, killed stone dead in James Reckitt Avenue during just such a raid as this.

Killed! It was the first time anyone really close to Marie had died, and the shock of it had knocked her sideways. She still couldn’t believe it – except that she surely did, because it had robbed her forever of that ‘it can’t happen to me’ sort of confidence. If it could happen to Margaret it could happen to Marie herself and now, as soon as the sky began to vibrate with the thrum, thrum, thrum of German aircraft, she trembled.

The patient was not reassured by her words of encouragement. His fleshy cheeks were pale, and his eyes rolled skywards. Sweat stood in large beads on his forehead and upper lip. ‘How much longer?’ he moaned.

‘Not much,’ she said, forcing a show of confidence and raising her voice above the noise of planes and guns. ‘We’ll be all right. Only the good die young.’

Through a gap in the screens she saw those patients who could, taking shelter under their beds, the other two nurses in the ward along with them. The impulse to do the same was nearly irresistible.

The doctor gave her a sardonic smile. ‘I take it you’re not good, then, Nurse?’

‘Not too good to live, I hope,’ she said, steadying herself to hold the incision open, now with the rattle of incendiaries and the ack! ack! ack! of anti-aircraft guns sounding in her ears.

The doctor had a vein. As he inserted the cannula the screech of a bomb preceded an earth-shattering blast, shaking the floor beneath their feet.

‘Keep calm,’ Dr Steele insisted. ‘I want this job out of the way. I don’t want to have to do this again.’

Marie glanced up at his lined old face, its expression quite impassive. Dr Steele? Dr Nerves-of-steel, rather. Either he was very brave, or completely lacking in imagination. He had no bedside manner, there was not much sympathy to be had from him, but he was a good man to be with in a crisis. He left you very little time to think of the people being bombed, or to worry about any of your friends or family being among them; no time to think about ruined houses, or wonder whether your own home was still standing. But very soon they might all be dead and then his retirement would be permanent. This might be the last time he’d ever have to do a cut-down to find a vein suitable for a transfusion; but he’d finish it.

Marie ran the blood through the tubing as fast as it would go and hung the bottle on the drip-stand. The doctor attached the end of the tube to the cannula, and started to suture the incision.

The noise of the first wave of aircraft receded. Now from the south came the drone of an approaching second wave, followed by a whistling scream and then the deafening crump of a bomb, shaking the hospital to its foundations, ripping off the blackout blinds, shattering all the windows and hurling lethal glass shards inwards with the speed of bullets.

‘Ouch!’ Marie almost jumped out of her skin when she felt a stinging in her left forearm, and saw that one of the smaller splinters had buried itself in her flesh.

With a palpitating heart she pulled it out, gritting her teeth against the pain. A deep gash about half an inch long gushed blood onto the sheet.

With his customary coolness the doctor took hold of her wrist and peered at the wound through his half-moon lenses. ‘That needs a stitch,’ he said, taking a lump of gauze from the trolley beside him and slapping it on the wound. ‘Hold that on it for now, and go and see who else is hurt.’

Half a dozen bedfast patients were calling for attention, and the two other nurses on duty were hastening towards them. Pressing the gauze over her own cut, Marie went to make a swift inspection of their injuries. On passing the broken windows she hesitated for a moment, seeing searchlights crisscrossing the sky. Some of the buildings – mostly business premises – on the other side of Prospect Street were on fire. By the time she hurried back to report, the doctor had threaded another needle with black suture.

‘You manage to keep pretty calm,’ she said, shivering.

‘I’m a fatalist,’ he said. If your name’s on it . . . as people never stop repeating. And I’m an old man. I’ll soon be dead anyway. I might as well go out with a bang as a whimper. All right, Nurse, sit down and calm down. I’ll start with you, since you’ll be needed to help evacuate the patients.’

‘No local?’

‘No time. Unless I’m much mistaken, the house governor will soon cut the juice off, and we’ll have no lights. Be a brave girl. This won’t hurt a bit.’

Marie looked him in the eye. ‘Won’t hurt you, you mean.’

‘That’s right.’

A bit of a sadist, Dr Steele, everybody said so. Marie hissed, drawing in her breath at the sting of the suture needle, the pain magnified by her keyed-up state. This seemed to afford him a rare amusement, and he chuckled.

‘You must have been in your element when you were newly qualified, sawing people’s legs off with only a glass of rum for an anaesthetic,’ she said, after a minute or two of his excruciating needlework.

His weary old eyes suddenly glinted up at her from under their bushy grey eyebrows. ‘But not as much as when I was giving my cheeky young assistant a good dose of the cat.’

At that moment, the place was plunged into darkness, except for the lurid red light thrown by the flames that were consuming nearby shops and houses.

‘There, what did I tell you? Lucky I got your stitch in,’ the doctor said, covering the gash with a dressing by the light of the flames. He taped it in place. ‘Now get up and get on with it, Nurse. There’s plenty to be done.’

Marie got on with it as best she could in the devastated ward, calming the patients and preparing them for the transfer to the lower floor, to another ward at best, or a place in a corridor, if the wards were crammed full. A porter rushed onto the ward with a trolley full of hurricane lamps and torches, and soon afterwards the night sister swept in to give them their marching orders.

‘It’s a miracle no one was killed,’ Marie remarked to Nurse Nancy Harding, as she kicked the brakes off the cut-down patient’s bed and began to push him in the direction of the corridor.

Nancy walked alongside, holding the blood bottle in one hand and a hurricane lamp in the other. ‘Who’s the idiot?’ she asked, her face ashen. ‘Is it me that’s missing something, or is it the house governor? Shutting the lights off! What for? To me, it’s bloody stupid. We’ve got to maintain the blackout, in case they spot where we are? Hasn’t he noticed they’ve just been raining bloody bombs on us? They obviously know where we are! And I should think they could tell by their incendiaries now, if they didn’t know already with their flares. I bet they can see us from Berlin. Can you see any sense in it?’

There it was again, that distant drone coming ever louder and nearer, a third wave of fire and blast borne on German wings.

The hair rose on the back of Marie’s neck, and her suppressed tension escaped in a trill of near-hysterical laughter. ‘Nobody’s allowed to think these days, Nurse Harding. There’s a war on! You just do as you’re told,’ she said. ‘But maybe it’s not just the blackout. The windows have blown out, and we’ll soon have water coming in from the fire-hoses. Water and electricity, Nance? They don’t mix very well, now do they?’

‘Oh,’ Nancy said, with a shiver. ‘Anyhow, it doesn’t make our job any easier, does it? All these patients to move; all these beds to shift in the dark, with all this bloody glass and rubble in the way. And the dust! It’s enough to choke you. I don’t see what there is to laugh at.’

‘We’re still alive. That’s what there is to laugh at,’ said Marie, working off her nervous energy by rushing the bed along as if they were in a race. ‘Isn’t that right, Mr Pattison?’

The patient grunted, evidently not trusting himself to speak.

‘Not like Margaret, poor lass,’ Nancy went on. ‘It’s hard to believe it’s only two months since she died, and only twenty-five. It’s cruel, isn’t it? Bloody Germans, I hate them all.’

They came to a halt outside the lifts, and Marie pressed the button, wondering for a moment whether they would be working. They were. The hospital governor might have cut the power to everything else, but the lifts were vital, at least until they got all these patients to the lower floors.

‘I know,’ said Marie. ‘I miss her like hell. But I seem to have lived a lifetime since then. Have you seen her husband since the funeral?’

‘Only once, in one of the fire engines just as I was leaving the hospital. Funny, I never thought Margaret would be the first of us to be married. I thought you’d be first. You were always leader of the pack.’

Marie gave a little shake of her head. ‘Well, she was a couple of years older than us, so she had a right to take precedence. And I’m glad she was first, the way it turned out. I’m glad she had her six months of married bliss before she died. It’s not much to ask, is it? I’m not going to pip you to the altar either, by the look of it. Now you’re engaged, you’re sure to be next.’

‘Maybe I will,’ Nancy said, and Marie knew that had her hands been free Nancy would have pulled the engagement ring out from its hiding place on the chain round her neck and she would have had to admire it, yet again. Marie inwardly congratulated herself on the startling success of her one and only attempt at matchmaking. She and George Maltby had almost been brought up together, their parents were such good friends. Contrary to all expectations, quiet, self-effacing George had done rather well for himself. He would make her best friend a good husband. Nancy would be well provided for.

‘’Course you’ll be next!’ Marie said. ‘Chas needs a squib up his backside. I know he loves me, but he’s taking so long over popping the question, I’ll probably die an old maid. I suspect his mother might have something to do with that. I don’t think she considers me top-drawer enough to be admitted into the Elsworth family.’

‘You’ll never be an old maid, and he’s a fool if he lets his mother stop him marrying you,’ Nancy said, as they steered the bed through the open lift doors.

‘You never know; families have a lot of influence,’ Marie said, smacking the button to take them down to the ground floor. ‘But I hope I shan’t be like Margaret: no sooner in my wedding dress than in my shroud. Oh, poor lass! I got the shock of my life when that happened. It’s never been the same since, without her.’ She paused, remembering the good times they’d shared with Margaret. ‘Do you remember how, when the three of us went dancing, she’d have half the hall watching her? And to watch her dance with Terry! What a team they were, like Rogers and Astaire. I thought of going to see him after the funeral, but – you know . . .’

‘I know. For one thing you don’t know what to say; you’re scared he might start crying or something, and what can you do, anyway?’

‘He’s got loads of friends at Central Fire Station, thank goodness.’

‘I know. There’ll be plenty of shoulders for him to cry on. Thank goodness.’

Chapter 2

Charles Elsworth’s mother pushed her spade into the soil, pulled herself up to her full five foot eight inches and fixed Marie with a severe stare. ‘His name,’ she said, ‘is Charles.’

With her patrician features and her haughty manners, Mrs Elsworth was a doughty opponent. So, here was the challenge. Marie had seen little of the Elsworths in the eight months that she and Charles had been going out together. But his parents knew after this time that marriage might be on the cards and Marie saw that the pecking order was being established, right here and now. There had to be a winner and a loser and Marie did not intend to lose.

She pushed her garden fork into the ground and accepted the challenge. ‘Hear that, Chas? Your name’s Charles,’ she said, with a sneaking suspicion that he enjoyed being the object of their rivalry.

‘Humph,’ he grunted, sweeping back a shock of wavy brown hair. His mouth, which almost always looked ready to break into a broad grin, was determinedly straight now, and his hazel eyes fixed themselves on some point in the middle distance. He was doing his best to ignore both women, remaining neutral as far as he could, keeping himself out of trouble. Then he seemed to rethink that strategy, and a second later pulled Marie close into him, lifting her off her feet, pressing his lips against hers in a smacking kiss. ‘I’ll be Chas if you like, or Sam, or Bill, or Ebenezer,’ he laughed, drawing back, ‘if you’ll ask me back to Clumber Street for a nightcap.’

His mother frowned. ‘You’re not Chas. You weren’t christened Chas, and you never will be Chas.’

Marie grinned up at him, showing a row of perfect white teeth. He’d been Chas when they’d been in the same class in infant school, and Chas he would remain, as far as she was concerned. But confident of her victory, she said no more.

Charles’s father looked up from his place outside the shed, where he was screwing together the last frame for the raised beds that now disfigured their large and once beautiful lawn and deep flower borders. A slow smile spread over his face. ‘I think you’ve met your match there, Marjorie.’

‘Put her down, Charles,’ Mrs Elsworth snapped. ‘It’s embarrassing.’

Charles put Marie down.

‘Her mum and dad are out of the way at her aunt Clara’s, that’s why he’s dying to get round to their house,’ Charles’s 15-year-old brother piped up. ‘That means we won’t be seeing him until after breakfast.’

Mr Elsworth gave him a warning look. ‘That’s enough, Danny.’

Marie’s eyes widened. ‘Cheeky pup! It doesn’t mean anything of the sort.’

‘’Course it does,’ Danny persisted. ‘Mum found one of your hairclips in his bed when she stripped it after his last leave.’

Marie felt Mrs Elsworth’s eyes appraising her, watching her reaction, and a deep flush rose to her cheeks. ‘What? My hairclips? That’s not possible, you cheeky monkey! You’d better watch out, or I’ll have you up for slander.’

Charles gave Danny a cuff round the ear. ‘You little liar. Mum found nothing of the sort. Now apologize.’

‘Ow, Charles! I’m not a liar, and I’m not apologizing.’

‘You are. And you will end up in court, if you carry on,’ Charles insisted.

Danny rubbed his ear. ‘Get lost! Anyway,’ he said, turning to Marie, ‘if I do, that’ll be two of us. Dad’s got a summons for driving without due care and attention. He forgot to put the brake on when the car in front stopped.’

Charles gave him another clout.

‘Ouch!’

‘And you’re making your mouth go without due care and attention. Time you put a brake on that.’

‘Leave him alone, Charles.’ His mother’s voice was very quiet, but there was an edge to it that made Charles stop. He looked about to say something, then caught his mother’s eye.

‘Stop squabbling and give me a hand to get this frame in place,’ Mr Elsworth said, putting an end to the dispute. ‘Then we can start filling it with topsoil. We should just manage to get the kale planted and watered before it gets dark.’

Her hairgrips in Charles’s bed? That was just young Danny’s idea of a joke; he loved trying to embarrass her. But Mr Elsworth, driving without due care and attention? Marie couldn’t believe it. His face was giving nothing away, and although she would have loved to know how that had come about, when he’d driven for years with not so much as a scratch, she decided to change the subject to spare his feelings.

‘We planted some kale last year,’ she said. ‘We’re not bothering this year, though. None of us liked it.’

‘Don’t you want to know what happened?’ Danny insisted.

‘Get hold of the end of this, and make yourself useful for a change,’ his father said, ‘instead of telling tales. Let’s see if you can make up with brawn what you lack in brains.’

They carried the frame to the end of the lawn and placed it a couple of feet beyond the last raised bed, leaving enough room to kneel in between them. Charles, his mother and Marie began filling it with topsoil while Mr Elsworth went back to the shed to get the plants.

Danny stood watching them. ‘Don’t you want to know, then?’

Marie could see he was dying to tell her, but she gave him no encouragement.

None was needed. ‘We were driving up Beverley Road, and I spotted some looters pulling the board of one of the bombed shops loose, and pointed them out to Dad. They had a quick look round, then one of them got inside and started passing stuff out to the other one. They hadn’t seen the copper walking along the side street towards them, and from where he was, he couldn’t see them, either. We just knew what was coming when he got to the corner, like something out of a Charlie Chaplin film. We both started laughing, and that was when Dad smacked into the car in front.’

‘Don’t say copper, Danny, it’s vulgar. Say policeman. And that’s when it stopped being funny for your father,’ Mrs Elsworth said, and for Marie’s benefit added: ‘Leonard offered to repair the other man’s car, but he was very aggressive. Some people just won’t listen to reason.’

‘The biggest laugh was that the policeman saw the crash, and came running straight over to us; he didn’t even see the looters.’ Danny grinned. ‘But as soon as they saw him, they beat it. And then he started chasing them, with the other driver yelling at him to come back and look at his car. Yeah, it was just like something off Charlie Chaplin. Hilarious.’

Mr Elsworth was back with the plants. ‘I never liked Charlie Chaplin; too silly for words. Go and fill those watering cans, Danny, instead of standing yapping.’

‘Oh, Dad! I think I’m the only one in this house who’s got a sense of humour!’ Danny picked up the can and went, a look of disgust on his face.

‘Clown! He’s got more chatter than a cage full of monkeys,’ Mr Elsworth said, carefully lowering himself to the ground to begin the planting.

Charles hunkered down on the opposite side of the bed. ‘Empty vessels make most noise. You let him get away with far too much, and you’re wasting your money, sending him to Hymers.’

Mrs Elsworth kneeled beside her husband. ‘You went to Hymers. It got you into university, and we can’t do less for Danny. We let you both get away with far too much. And I don’t regret it, either, now. If the war lasts much longer he’ll be called up, and then who knows what might happen to him? They were sending 16-year-olds to the front line in the last one.’

‘He’ll never get into university; he’s too fond of playing the fool. The Forces would do him good. Make a man of him. He gets away with murder at home.’

Marie quietly took her place beside Charles and worked quickly, pushing the plants in.

Mr Elsworth began to cough, and pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket. ‘You should have stayed out of it, never mind trying to get Danny in. You should have taken that job in Kemp’s solicitors, and worked for your articles. I’ve never been right since the last lot. And don’t say I didn’t warn you.’

‘How could I stay out of it? Everybody at university was joining up. Anyway, I didn’t want to stay out of it.’

Mr Elsworth raised his eyebrows, and gave a snort of contempt. ‘You fool! You think you’re going into some sort of adventure straight out of the Boy’s Own Paper. That’s the young, you can’t tell them anything. But you’ll know what war’s all about before you’ve finished. I only hope you’ll live long enough to profit by it.’

He pushed his handkerchief back into his trouser pocket, and they worked on in silence. The kale was in the ground before Danny came back with the watering cans.

When they’d finished, Marie turned to survey the garden. ‘Potatoes, onions, runner beans, beetroot, cabbage, carrots. A good bit of stuff in there. Not a bad day’s work.’

‘My lovely lawn and my beautiful borders,’ Mrs Elsworth lamented. ‘Ruined.’

‘We kept them as long as we could, but you can’t eat grass or flowers, Marjorie. This will be more use, especially at the rate we’re losing shipping. The civilian death toll’s nowhere near our shipping losses, in my opinion. If it goes on at this rate, we’ll have neither ships nor men to bring any food in.’

‘That’s defeatist talk, Dad,’ said Charles.

‘It’s facts. How many times do you hear of ships and men who’ll never come home again, and read nothing of it in the papers? So, we’ll grow our own, and rely on ourselves as much as we can, and then we’ll have a bit of a chance if some of those convoys don’t get through. That’s not defeatist, is it? We might even get a pig.’

‘We might not!’ Mrs Elsworth protested. ‘I’ve let you ruin my flower garden, but I draw the line at pigs.’

‘You’ll get your share, as well, Marie, for all the help you’ve given us,’ Mr Elsworth said, ignoring the protest.

‘I didn’t do it for that. We’ve got plenty growing on Dad’s allotment. Everything – veg, apples and pears, rhubarb, soft fruits, the lot. We hardly ever have to buy vegetables, or fruit.’

‘It was very good of you to spare the time to help us, especially after the terrible time you’ve had at the hospital lately,’ Mrs Elsworth condescended.

‘Yes, it was high jinks at the infirmary, the night before April Fools’ Day!’ Marie pulled up her sleeve to display her newly healed scar. ‘Glass splinters shooting into the ward like bullets, and then we were dragging beds around with only hurricane lamps and torches for light. But we were lucky, there was none of us badly hurt, not like people in the buildings round about.’ She pulled her sleeve down again. ‘It put the Victoria wing out of action, though – three wards lost. We’re about 160 beds fewer because of it, but I was more upset by the damage to the Metropole Hall on West Street than anywhere else.’ She sighed heavily. ‘It had the best dance floor in Hull. I’ll really miss that place; I learned to do the Lambeth Walk there.’

That earned her a disapproving frown from Mrs Elsworth. ‘There are more important places to worry about than dance halls, my girl.’

Mr Elsworth, who was in the civil defence, backed his wife up. ‘Control HQ, for example,’ he said. ‘When that land mine fell outside the Shell Mex building on Ferensway we hardly knew what had hit us. People blown in all directions, ceilings and walls caving in, furniture and filing cabinets picked up and dropped anyhow, and fires breaking out all over the place. People dead, people wounded, and a lot of those who weren’t were shocked rigid and useless for anything. A few of us were trying to put the fires out, and give the layout of the building to the rescue services, but it was a complete bloody shambles.’ He gave a hollow laugh. ‘I was glad I’d lent the Wolseley to you, Charles, or that would have gone up, too. All the official cars outside were blown sky high. And nothing left of the policeman but bits of his uniform.’

‘I know that poor man’s wife,’ said Mrs Elsworth. Her eyes were so reproachful Marie felt as guilty as if she’d dropped the bomb on the Shell Mex building herself.

‘I know, it was awful, but I wasn’t talking about what got hit the worst, just what I’ll miss the most.’

‘Doing the Lambeth Walk, evidently. Poor Dr Diamond killed as well, and only the day after we’d seen him when we went to give blood. Charles came home early that night, didn’t you, Charles? They had to clear the dance hall to make room for homeless families.’

Charles looked as if he’d have liked to cuff his mother round the ear.

Marie’s jaw dropped. ‘Dance hall? You never told me you’d been to a dance hall!’

‘Hang it all, you were at work, and it was my first night on leave. It won’t last for ever. I’ve got to make the most of it. Live life to the full, while I can,’ he protested.

The heat rose to Marie’s cheeks. ‘So it seems,’ she said. ‘I’m helping to move a hundred and odd patients, imagining you out of the shelter and safely tucked up in bed, and you’re swanning off to dance halls – without a word to me!’

Charles reddened. ‘It’s pretty obvious you go dancing without me, if you miss the Metropole Hall so much,’ he retorted. ‘We’ve hardly ever been there. I suppose you dance with a lot of foreign servicemen.’

Unable to deny the charge, Marie was silent for a moment, now on the defensive. ‘Well, there was never any harm in it! I went with Nancy, or Margaret – when she was alive – even after she got married, if her husband was working. And we always left by ourselves.’

‘Well so did I!’ Charles protested, with a glance in his mother’s direction, ‘and I didn’t get the chance to tell you; I went on the spur of the moment. So while you were moving your patients about, the place was closing, and not long after that I was tucked up in bed. It hardly seemed worth mentioning.’

So why had his mother mentioned it, Marie wondered, catching that grim expression on Mrs Elsworth’s face. Probably because she wanted to put a spanner in the works. Probably because she didn’t want any girl who’d left school at fourteen, whose parents could barely afford the rent on their house on Clumber Street, getting her hooks into her privately educated darling Charles. She frowned.

‘More old edge than a ragman’s saw,’ Marie’s father had once said, of Mrs Elsworth, and her father was pretty good at sizing people up, she thought.

Marie had every intention of getting her hooks into Charles, in spite of his mother. They’d been good friends as children until the parting of the ways on the day they left St Vincent’s for secondary school – Charles to fee-paying Hymers College, Marie to St Mary’s. After that the crown prince of the Elsworth clan had associated with friends suitable to his private school, and Marie had barely seen him, until the war came. They met again at a dance at Beverley Road Baths, when he cut in on her partner during an ‘excuse me’. Before she knew what was happening she found herself gliding swiftly over the floor in his arms, leaving her former partner standing. Charles had propelled her expertly round, while reminiscing about the funnier incidents and high points of their infant days in a voice that had become thrillingly deep.

‘I think I’ve been in love with you since we were five years old, when I used to dream about the fairy princess with the piercing blue eyes and the flaxen plaits. I see you’ve chopped them off,’ he joked, his eyes full of laughter as he appraised her now much shorter hair.

‘I’d look a bit silly with plaits, at twenty-three,’ she said.

‘Perhaps, and now I shall pick up that outsized torch I used to carry for you, and love you just as much with a flaxen bob.’

‘Idiot,’ she laughed, but she was inclined to believe him. At school, he’d always sat as near to her as he could get in class and at dinner, and he’d fought her battles in the school playground. At the womanly age of five, she had known that Charles Elsworth was seriously smitten with her, and that she could wind him round her little finger.

‘You’ve managed all right without me for long enough,’ she said. ‘We’ve hardly exchanged half a dozen words since you went to Hymers.’

His expression became serious. ‘Till now, I’ve loved you from afar – rather like Dante loved Beatrice. He didn’t have to see her all the time to make her his ideal, and write reams of poetry about her.’

Marie raised her eyebrows. ‘I wasn’t afar,’ she said. ‘I was only half a dozen streets away. So how many poems have you written about me?’

‘Well, to tell the truth –’ he hesitated and broke into a grin – ‘poetry’s not really my strong point.’

She laughed at that. Charles’s hazel eyes still danced as they looked into hers, and his sense of humour was the same, regardless of the polish he’d gained. She warmed to him. Her own partner saw it, and abandoned the field.

Now, every time they crossed the road on the walk from his parents’ grand house, with its vast rear gardens on